INTERMEDIATE OUTCOME 3

An important pillar in advancing GGGI’s global green growth agenda and global and national actions is the sharing of knowledge, success stories, best practices, technologies and tools, between countries, the private sector and non-state actors.

To this end, GGGI leverages its extensive partner network, made up of partner countries; international and local green growth stakeholders; the private sector; academia; and civil society, to actively support and participate in national, regional and global platforms and deliver capacity building and knowledge sharing initiatives focused on green growth.

This highlights GGGI’s strategic role as a broker of green growth knowledge and learning between countries and other nonstate actors.

Results delivered under Intermediate Outcome 3 demonstrate how well GGGI is fulfilling its role to build capacity, partnerships, to harness knowledge to inform policy and investment decisions, and support leaders to better advocate for green growth.

Of these activities, 37% involved sharing of lessons from other countries.

In 2017, GGGI delivered 160 capacity building activities. The participants benefited from knowledge and skills transfer and skills development which enhanced Member and partner countries capacity to develop and implement green growth policies, investments and project implementation. For projects that collected participation rates by gender, the overall participation rate was 41% female and 59% male. Of the 2017 activities, 37% of capacity building events involved sharing of lessons from other countries.

The capacity development events were based on engagement with international and local partners, including private sector and civil society. Through multistakeholder initiatives, these activities have identified synergies and maximized effectiveness of resources.

Some highlights of the type of events held in 2017 include:

Rwanda - Investment mobilized: The identification of knowledge gaps and instigation of targeted knowledge sharing and capacity building events is an integral part of GGGI’s work to strengthen green growth policies and ultimately mobilize green growth investments for partner countries. In Rwanda, GGGI introduced the “Training for Trainers Program” which sought to improve skills amongst government officials designing and implementing green secondary cities programs. The launching workshop, attended by 36 officials, provided them the skills to produce concept notes for secondary cities programs and helped them share that knowledge with their implementing partners and teams.

Following the workshop, 6 green city concept notes were produced by the officials which led to 6 secondary cities adopting green growth policies. The robustness of these projects has attracted private sector interest. As part of one of the Green City Pilot Projects, GGGI helped to mobilize USD 60 million in private investment for a Cactus Park Housing Development.

China South-South cooperation: GGGI partnered with the Government of China to coordinate 10 knowledge sharing events as part of the China Climate Change Seminar Program for the Belt and Road Countries. China sponsored 56 officials from 13 GGGI member countries to attend training focused on Chinese experiences in green growth development. Each training lasted 2-3 weeks, sharing knowledge of best-practices in technology and policies regarding climate change mitigation, renewable energy, energy efficiency and sustainable cities. Clear feedback among participants indicated that their capacity to implement green growth was increased by knowledge gained through the training and that the lessons learned would be applicable to projects they are responsible for implementing in their home countries. In China, the recommendations acquired through such events were consolidated and delivered to senior government officials. Furthermore, as part of this training, officials were afforded the opportunity to meet with multiple high level decision makers regarding policy and green technology exchanges between countries. The Chinese Government also indicated that alumni of the program are welcome to China at any time and would be provided high-level access to cooperation project stakeholders in the future.

Country Knowledge Building: In Senegal, GGGI jointly organized a capacity building event with the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development for 20 mayors, members of the Network of Green Cities and Towns of Senegal. The event focused on lessons about Green City Development and was built on experiences drawn from similar projects in Rwanda, Vietnam and Cambodia. The participants benefited from discussions about best practices in green city development and learning from other countries’ experiences.

Green Growth Knowledge Platform: In 2016, GGGI linked the Green-Win project website to the Green Growth Knowledge Platform (GGKP), creating a green growth development focused knowledge sharing resource. In 2017, GGGI continued to maintain the website, publishing 15 blogs and disseminating publications to help share knowledge, accelerate learning and build capacity on the knowledge resources generated through Green-Win using the GGKP.

GGGI values its role as a broker in forging important and high value partnerships with non-state actors outside its formal relationships with key government counterparts who are the key beneficiaries of its projects. These non-state partners include green growth and environmental organizations, the private sector, non-government organizations, multilateral development banks, multilateral agencies, bilateral agencies and cross governmental partnerships.

While the data was not fully reported on the proportion of people participating in GGGI’s capacity development activities, across the 12 countries that reported it, an average of 97% of the participants felt they had gained increased knowledge and skills as a result of attending a GGGI event.

In 2017, GGGI projects were active in brokering partnerships to meet country needs. Partnerships were forged to facilitate 26 projects across 17 countries, against a target of 5. This was up from 2016 when 23 projects reported developing partnerships across 14 countries.

Facilitating Partnerships to Meet Country Needs: Case Study

Parnership with Green Climate Fund

A common goal and the complementary delivery model of GGGI and GCF have allowed for a strong strategic partnership between the two organizations.

GCF and GGGI signed an Memorandum of Understanding and a Framework Readiness and Preparatory Support Grant Agreement in April 2017 to guide cooperation, leveraging GGGI’s local presence, relationships and knowledge to support the implementation of ambitious green growth programs and climate change projects in developing countries. In 2017, GGGI began supporting its Member and partner countries under the GCF Readiness and Preparatory Support Programme. As of March 2018, GGGI has provided technical assistance to prepare proposals for readiness grants in 10 countries.

GGGI is supporting the implementation of readiness projects in Mongolia, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, Lao PDR and Rwanda. To date, readiness proposals valued at USD 6.5 million have been submitted by GGGI partner countries and USD 2.8 million has been secured from GCF for these countries.

In Mongolia, readiness activities focus on the development of the Mongolia Green Credit Fund as a market instrument to mobilize private financing to help reach the GHG reduction targets defined in Mongolia’s NDCs.

In Vanuatu, the readiness program assists in the establishment of the National Green Energy Fund in-line with the NDCs of Vanuatu to achieve 100% electrification for everyone through renewable energy sources.

The readiness support for Papua New Guinea, Lao PDRand Thailand will strengthen the country’s engagement with GCF and help build capacity of public and private sector actors to design and implement climate change projects.

GGGI supported the EthiopianMinistry of Finance and Economic Cooperation to prepare the GCF project for responding to the increasing risk of drought: building gender-responsive resilience of the most vulnerable communities. A USD 50 million climate adaptation project was approved by the GCF in October 2017.

GGGI provided support to Rwanda’s FONERWA to prepare the USD 32.79 million GCF project, Strengthening climate resilience of rural communities in Northern Rwanda, with the Ministry of Environment of Rwanda.

GCF and GGGI are pursuing long-term cooperation through joint capacity development and peer-to-peer knowledge exchange events. During the Global Green Growth Week in Ethiopia in October 2017, GGGI organized a Readiness Workshop and Project Preparation Clinic with the GCF. To build further on cooperation areas, GGGI and GCF aim to provide joint support for country programming in priority countries to prepare quality, investment-ready climate change projects for GCF funding. Aligned with GGGI Refreshed Strategic Plan and the six strategic outcomes, this strategic partnership is expected to mobilize USD 20 million readiness funds to build capacity of the countries and result in USD 500 million portfolio of GCF-funded projects in more than 20 GGGI partner countries.arch Institute (ERI), GGGI produced a recommendation report to explore safeguards, industry-standards and data-based recommendations to green China’s substantial overseas investments under SSC, up to 30% of which are carbon-related. The recommendations will inform the National Development and Reform Commission’s (NDRC) efforts in greening China’s SSC activities and One Belt One Road (OBOR) Program (USD 40 billion Silk Road Fund).

In addition, GGGI cooperated with its Chinese partner institutes to support the development of green growth policies in Shishou City, a rural municipality in Hebei Province. The piloted sustainable cities policy concepts will feed into expanded knowledge sharing activities in 2017-2018.

GGGI’s outputs that incorporated lessons from other countries informed 3 out of the 5 (60%) policies that were completed and adopted by partner governments in 2017 with GGGI’s support.

In 2017, 27 projects implemented by GGGI had reported helping leaders in more than 19 countries to better advocate for green growth by providing examples of success.

Policy and investment outcomes achieved by country programs have been informed by the efforts to share knowledge between countries. While no target was set for this indicator, the result is an important indicator to ensure that internationally recognized best practices and lessons from partner countries inform policy development and investment mobilization.

For example:

Rwanda: In assisting to prepare and adopt District Development Plans for Secondary Cities, GGGI built on knowledge, best-practices, and lessons learned from partner countries by organizing workshops, country visits and media communications. The GGGI Rwanda team shared its experience in designing national finance vehicles with the GGGI Mozambique team, while GGGI staff from Cambodia visited Rwanda to learn how secondary cities were being designed and implemented in Rwanda and share their own experiences.

In addition, a high-level conference, the Rwanda Green Growth Week, provided an opportunity to share lessons between the Rwandan government and non-government actors, GGGI teams from Senegal, Uganda and Ethiopia, the African Partnership on Low Emission Development Strategies, and members of Rwanda’s green secondary cities program. These knowledge sharing events offered an opportunity to replicate and build on successes from other programs to cost-effectively maximize project impact.

Under the Strategic Plan 2015-2020, GGGI’s goal is to mainstream green growth in its Member and partner countries planning and investments. To achieve this, a key role of GGGI is to build political support and increase advocacy for green growth amongst influential leaders, using its projects as examples of supporting evidence. The 2017 results indicate that good progress has been made toward fulfilling this role.

GGGI in Ethiopia: gathering regional and international leaders to drive the green growth agenda.

Facilitating Knowledge Sharing to Meet Country Needs: Case Study

Global Green Growth Week 2017

GGGI and the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia hosted Global Green Growth Week 2017(GGGWeek2017) from October 17-20, 2017, at the United Nations Conference Centre (UNCC) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Over 500 participants attended GGGWeek2017, including high-level ministers, thought leaders, institutional investors and decision
makers seeking to scale up green growth in Africa and around the world. The event served as an opportunity to network, learn, share, and catalyze creative solutions for transformational green growth. It focused on Africa, detailing existing program's achievements, best practices and identifying opportunities to replicate and learn from past experiences.